Richard Allison (~1560/70 – died before 1610) was a gentleman as he calles himself ”Gent. Practitioner in the Art of Musicke ” on the first page of his work published in 1599 ”The Psalms of David in Meter”.

Supposedly it is his coat of arms on the back cover and there is also a poem by John Dowland praising the author and his pieces.

As it is seen in the photo above, the music was set in print that way so that the psalms could be sung in four parts the singers sitting around the table accompanying themselves with lute or cittern.

Come Holy Ghost – Richard Allison

Boldogasszony anyánk (Joyous Lady our mother), folk song

I heard this folk song from Erzsébet Török in the first years of the 1970-ies. This, or its variants are sung at rural parish-feasts, most likely in Transylvania too where she came from. The term ”Joyous Lady” for the Virgin Mary is a Hungarian speciallity as far as I know coming perhaps from the pagan times, referring to the pagan goddess of our predecessors, the phrase somehow surviving a millennium of christianity.

Erzsébet Török was a fantastic singer. I loved her singing very much. If my poor memory serves me well I sang this song at her funeral in 1973.

The lyrics of this folk song is sung here the same way as my memory serves me today. I just couldn’t find the original. Should I find a publication of it later I sure will paste it somewhere here.
However, this might be an apt example of the nature of folk songs and of ”poetical themes wandering freely and being transformed locally” as I mentioned in the introduction. The singer remembers something, somehow, and sings it freely.

The lute accompaniment of this song is based on the chords of András L. Kecskés whom I just wanted to show how I play this song usually as a CD might be made by him that perhaps will contain this song as well.
Some more personal addendum on the pretext of Erzsébet Török: Zsuzsanna Gedényi writes in her memoirs („Csillagom, révészem – Török Erzsi tükre”, <Püski Kiadó, Budapest, 1997>)

„One of our acquaintances had a tumbledown old Tatraplan car. Far not everybody had a car those days, privately owned cars were rarities indeed. This kind gentleman offered to give a lift to the singer lady… … all in all, we had two more punctures coming home from the country so we arrived back in Budapest at haf past seven in the morning.”

I believe this „kind gentleman”might have been my father. Not only had he a tumbledown Czech Tatraplan at the end of the 50-ies, but he also knew many artists of that age personally. I also have a memory of my mother crying and quarelling early in the morning why my father didn’t phone her (of course, there were no public booths on highways, nor did simple people like us usually have a phone at their homes in the communist era). It might have been this occasion I believe.

My father was a truly good father. I sing this song to him, to Erzsébet Török and to every soul who have already passed this transitional physical world – that is, to the community of saints – commending them and all of us still alive here into the mercy of God, using the symbol of parental love – the Joyous Lady Mother – for the love of God.

This cover and arrangement for oud accompaniment follows the original music rather freely.

The word ’Attar’ used for poetic pen-name means herbist or apothecary (also rose oil by some dictionaries). Attar was indeed an apothecary in Nishapur, Horasan (today Iran) and he was killed in the massacre committed by the Mongolian troops of Genghis Khan in 1221. According to one of the legends of his death, ’He was captured by a Mongol. One day someone came along and offered a thousand pieces of silver for him. Attar told the Mongol not to sell him for that price since the price was not right. The Mongol accepted Attar’s words and did not sell him. Later, someone else came along and offered a sack of straw for him. Attar told the Mongol to sell him because that was how much he was worth. The Mongolian soldier cut off Attar’s head in revenge.’

Sleep is a reconciling,
A rest that Peace begets:
Doth not the sun rise smiling,
When fair at e’en he sets,
Rest you then, rest, sad eyes,
Melt not in weeping,
While she lies sleeping,
Softly, now softly lies sleeping.
Rest you then, rest, sad eyes,
Melt not in weeping,
While she lies sleeping,
Softly, now softly lies sleeping.

John Dowland First Booke of Songes ( 1597) became an immediate bestseller. It was published at least in five reprints until 1613. Perhaps this success was the reason of his similar song collections that followed (see below: ”The Epistle to the Reader”), in the third of which (The Third and Last Booke of Songes or Aires, 1603) this beautiful enigmatic poem was set to his own music. The author of the poem is unknown, might even be Dowland himself.

If such songs were the ”top hits” of the age that might explain something about how and why audiances were open to Shakespeare’s art, e.g. the Hamlet Soliloquy:

8 chorus renaissance lute

Sometimes I sing this song – of course, in Hungarian to Hungarian audiences – of Bálint Balassi (1554-1594) which has a double – Hungarian and Latin – title : Borivóknak való (For Wine Drinkers) / In laudem verni temporis (In praise of spring-time) dropping stanzas 4, 5 and 6. I do this partly because these are the stanzas having the most of the archaic phrases hard to understand at first for present-day’s ears, but also – maybe subconsciously – because I don’t feel like willing to praise ’ blood-stained weapons’.

Still, I have mixed feelings when I drop these stanzas. And also when I don’t. So I don’t quite agree with myself in either case. This needs to be explained:

The ’good, brave frontier soldiers’ gave their lives for the ’sacred case’ defending Christianity and the homeland. The Turkish soldiers gave their lives to save the souls of their infidel Hungarian brothers for the ’only one faith’. There have been so many causes, faiths, and so much blood has been shed for thousands of years for the lust of power operating with ideologies. An is still being shed today.

In my opinion, this poem is about praising life, and that’s why I sing it. And if I don’t hide the fact that it was chiefly the sword that represented manly virtue for our predecessors in their times and that they were led by their belief in defending the country, it is to give due honour to them and is not some kind of sabre-rattling.

If there are flush meadows of Elysium somewhere, and our ancestors – including Sir Balassi – are galopping around on their ’speedy stallions’ there, I imagine they wish us to stop wars and show manly virtues in defending life instead.

In the ’Balassi-codex’ we find this comment before the poem: ”To the tune of the song ’Fejemet nincsen már’<’No place to lay my head’>”. This confirms the statement I made earlier that in this age poems and songs meant very much the same. This translation is the work of the recently deceased (2012) linguist, poet, literary translator of Hindu-English origin René Bonnerjea who lived in Hungary for forty years and besides holding other posts, was a professor of the prestigious Eötvös College in Budapest. Thanks to Andy Brunning for answering questions about prosody in applying the translation to the original tune.

Bless us Oh Lord almighty for Thy great benevolence
Illuminate our minds in Thy mercifulness
With bright shining of Thy face and gift of Thy Holy Sprite
So that our lives on this Earth in truth we may live aright.

Getting in contact with Calvinistic circles during his stays in Poland, Bálint Balassi got to know and thus translated the song starting with “Błogosław nas nasz, Panie”, a paraphrase of Psalm 67 from the book of Jakub Lubeczyk: Psałterz Dawida (1558). He also added a fourth stanza of his own to his translation. The preamble in his publication literally translates: ”A Polish song from verb to verb. To the tune of Blahoslav nas”.

I sing only the first stanza here in three languages: the original Polish version, Balassi’s Hungarian translation and also an English adaptation. This later one is a joint work with singer Jeni Melia and lutenist Christopher Goodwin secretary of the British Lute Society with whom and with the Kecskés Ensemble we gave some concerts in Poland by the invitation of Polish lute-artist Antoni Pilch in 2009. Grateful thanks to Antoni for his kind invitation and to Jeni and Chris for their co-operation and the tremendous help they gave me in the venture of translating to their native tongue.

As for the imitation of Polish pronounciation besides some native speakers, I owe great gratitude to Polonist Ms Anna Íjjas.

1.
Where are you my sweetheart
preparing to part from me,
hiding far from me?
In that distant, strange land
who’ll take pity on thee?
Should you ever fall ill,
who will care for thee?
Like a bird ensnared,
my life dims all going grey,
slowly slipping away.
The Sun gives in to dusk
with each dying ray.
All my sweet delights are
waning day by day.

2.
Hear the rooster crow,
Soon the dawn will glow.
In green forests, in lush meadows
Walks a bird below.
What a bird, so fine!
What a bird, so fine!
Green feet, blue wings, she waits for me,
This lovely bird of mine.
Wait you bird of mine,
Just you wait, oh mine!
If God ordered me for thee,
Then sure I will be thine.

The arrangement of these two folksongs* is the work of contemporary composer Elek Huzella (1915-1971), presumably the 2nd and 3rd pieces of his Four Lovesongs for Voice and Guitar.

’Presumably’ because from the music sheet I once owned, only these two songs survived in photocopy, so being unsure of the source, I can only make probable its title.

Though I made a transcription of the accompaniment for lute as well, I found this 20th century setting – meanwhile accepting the original intention of the composer – more becoming to be played on guitar. Also, I chose a light action, commercial guitar for the purpose since effects like slides for example sound better on it.

An interesting addendum: The 2nd song based on the Messianic symbol of the rooster’s crow and amended with some additional lines in Hebrew became an internationally recognised treasure of Hungarian Judaism.** Here’s a short video from a Purim party I was kindly invited to and where I sang with the guests this version, too.

I always try to get advice from reliable native speakers when translating and novelist Ms Julia Rubin was kind enough to help me translating these songs. I met her in luthier Romanek Tihamer’s workshop. Her new novel touches upon the lost instrument the lute-harpsichord, and travelling by in Europe, she visited Tihamer to hear the sound of his reconstructions of the instrument. I am very grateful to her for the thorough weighing of words and the brilliant pieces of advice she gave me.

*Or lovesongs from the renaissance era? – the lyrics of the first song was found in the 17th century Mátray-Codex, the second one was collected by Zoltán Kodály in 1912 as a folksong, but the provenance of it is widely debated by scholars <unfortunately, all related literature I found is in Hungarian>

** A quote from internet: ’… In particular, Reb Taub is renowned for his own poetic creations – Jewish religious texts set to Hungarian folk melodies of the immediate region, which he often considered to have originated in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. To cite his most famous example, Reb Taub once heard a shepherd boy in a meadow singing; having recognized the tune as an ancient Jewish melody from the Temple, he paid him two gold pieces for his song. The rabbi instantly learned the melody while the boy forgot it. The song itself, in Hungarian “Szól a kakas már“ (The Rooster is Crowing), remains famous to this day, repeatedly performed and recorded.’

Two Hungarian folksongs (sung in English – arrangement by Elek Huzella)

The ballad ”Paseábase el rey moro” was translated from Arabic into Spanish (though doubted by some scholars if an Arabic version had existed at all) by Perez de Hita (1544-1619) in his historical novel (Historia de los vandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrages (1595–1619), or Guerras civiles de Granada). The ballad tells the story of the loss of Alhama, the last Moorish fortress before Granada, in 1482. Perez de Hita writes in his book: “The Count of Tendilla (who became the governer of Granada after having defeated the Moors) felt obliged to prohibit this ballad because it stirred up the populace to such a degree as to disturb the peace and make it necessary to resort to armas in order to stifle the mutinies of the Moriscos .” The music is written for vihuela by Luis de Narváez („Los seys libros del Delphín, de música cifras para tañer vihuela”, 1538: Romance <<Paseávase el Rey moro>>, del quarto tono). Neither the original Arabic poem nor it’s tune survived, however, I play some beats at the beginning of a supposed ”original” version before I start Narváez’s accompaniment as a prelude.

The ballad was translated by Lord Byron, too. Here are the fist few stanzas of it from an early publication:

This poem of Lord Byron was set to music by Richard Dyer-Bennet. I first heard it sung by Joan Baez in the early seventies. I follow here the original accompaniment with minimal differences on a lute guitar tuned to d/a/f/c/G/C. I felt this instrument fits best the romantic poem and song.

At least visually.

Addendum: A contemporary composer (unfortunately forgot the name) wrote a duo for lute and bagpipe. When he was criticized for the lute being non-audible due to the bagpipe, his answer was something like this: It is deliberately so. I wanted to draw attention to the importance of the neglected visual aspect of music.

Some other personal addendum: Finishing recording this song a couple of times, being hungry and searching for a restaurant ’so late in the night’, friend Tamás and I found ourselves in the streets of Budapest ’a-roving by the light of the moon’.